Intelligent Method for Corrosion Detection and Quantification in Aircraft Lap Joints Using Pulsed Eddy Current

Abstract

Nondestructive evaluation using pulsed eddy current (PEC) has remarkable capabilities for the detection and characterization of hidden corrosion in multilayer structures. Previous works proposed maximum peak value, time-to-peak, and time-to-zero crossing of PEC signals for hidden corrosion detection. In practice, there are two important noise sources: probe liftoff and interlayer gap. These noise sources disable the aforementioned components in defect detection and classification. This paper delivers a new intelligent method for detection and classification of corrosion defects in two-layer structures at the presence of gap and liftoff. Application independent component analysis and principal component analysis to PEC signals for features extraction and Fisher’s linear discriminant method for classification provide an automatic material loss characterization in multilayer structures. Comparing the results with conventional methods based on PEC signals shows the importance of post-processing methods in the detection and quantification of corrosion.